the men on a different footing after the first trip, and I had but
little use for liquor as an engine to help business.

A man must needs, too, be very cautious in inviting men to indulge. If
it is done in any way so that it appears to be to help make sales it
will do more harm than good. A certain class of traveling men will
invite a merchant to go out and get a drink as if they were offering
him a new paper collar, or to pay for his having his boots blacked.
Their manner seems to say, "I must buy you a drink and then I'm going
to stick you on an order." They disgust where they expected to please.

Yet, as I have said before, men seem to come close together over a
glass of beer. My friend had positively refused to buy a dollar's
worth from me, and I had put him down as rather a surly fellow, but as
we sat there over our beer he chatted about himself, his business, and
his partner, as if we were old friends.

"I have been seventeen years in trade," said he, "and we have been
tolerably successful. I began with $1,500, and I suppose I am worth
$35,000, but I work fourteen hours a day, and I have to carry all the
responsibility on my shoulders. My partner waits on customers when he
is in the store, but when he wants to go out driving or to go anywhere
else, he goes. I never let him do anything but he makes a bull. He
contracted for advertising the other day, $300 worth, in a paper that
will never do us three cents' worth of good. We have the meanest kind
of competition here; every wholesale house retails, too, and retails a
good many goods at wholesale prices. They buy in larger quantities
than we do, and of course can buy cheaper, and they look upon their
retail profit as so much clear gain. I am tired of the business, and
if I could sell out I would get into the jobbing trade."